...GEDUCOS, Argyll Cyrus B. I. BACKGROUND INFORMATION / ADDITIONAL PERSPECTIVE Public Relations is the process of building up good relationships between a company or organization and the public. They use Public Relations to build up a good reputation and a good name for their company and sometimes they use it to clear things up on their part especially if they are in a great crisis. Crisis need not strike a company purely as a result of its own negligence or misadventure. Often, a situation is created which cannot be blamed on the company - but the company finds out pretty quickly that it takes a huge amount of blame if it fumbles the ball in its response. One perfect example of this is that of Johnson & Johnson, and their response to the Tylenol poisoning back in the year 1982 when the company’s Tylenol medication commanded 35 per cent of the US over-the-counter analgesic market. Unfortunately, one individual succeeded at lacing the medication with cyanide. This caused the death of seven people which resulted into a nationwide panic about how widespread the said contamination may be. In the end of that certain incident, everyone knew that Tylenol was associated with the scare and J&J’s market value fell by one billion dollars as a result. History repeated for Johnson & Johnson. The incident reenacted itself in 1986, but the company has learned its lesson and is not willing to suffer the same consequences. It acted rapidly and recalled every Tylenol products from every market...
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...Effects of oil on ecosystems: A comparison of the Exxon Valdez and the BP oil spill The Exxon Valdez was a single hull, 987-foot super tanker built by the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, out of San Diego, California. The Exxon Corporation commissioned this ship into service on December 11, 1986. After the March of 1989 collision with Bligh Reef, the vessel was towed to the shipyard in San Diego and repaired in June of 1989, more than 1,600 tons of steel needed replacing, and the cost of this repair was over $30 million dollars. The Valdez is back in use owned and operated by the Hong Kong Bloom Shipping LTD., renamed the Dong Fang Ocean, and registered out of Panama. At 12:04 A.M. on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef, Captain Joseph Hazelwood was below decks and intoxicated, the vessel was under the control of the third mate, Gregory Cousins. It was later found that in addition to the intoxicated captain, the third mate, Gregory Cousins, did not have the proper endorsement on his coast guard license to operate a ship in the pristine waters of Prince William Sound, and on top of this Exxon failed to repair the damaged radar that could have prevented the accidental grounding of the ship. At the time of impact, the Valdez was carrying 55 million gallons of crude oil and 11 million gallons of crude was spilt into one of the most delicate, and bountiful marine ecosystems on earth, Prince William Sound. This number of 11 million gallons has been...
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...Exxon Valdez Oil Spill of 1989 Isaac Mitchell Maine Maritime Academy The Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 occurred in Prince William Sound off the coast of southwestern Alaska. The date when the oil tanker ran aground was March 24th, 1989. It struck Bligh Reef at about 12:04 a.m. There have been various estimates of how much oil spilled into the ocean. A total of 11 million US gallons was a commonly accepted estimate of the spill’s volume, used by the State of Alaska’s Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club ("Questions and answers," 1990). Other groups, such as Defenders of Wildlife, question the official estimates, maintaining that the volume of the spill went underreported (DeVries, Luts, 2004). Alternative calculations, based on an assumption that the seawater rather than oil drained from the damaged tanks, estimate the total to have been 25 to 32 million US gallons (Bluemink, 2010). Because of the spill many practices were going to change in the shipping industry. The Exxon Valdez oil spill drastically changed the United States’ shipping regulations, policies, and documentation. The Exxon Valdez damaged eight of its eleven tanks on board, spilling 11 million gallons of its 53 million gallon cargo of oil. Those 11 million gallons would spread and ultimately impact over 1,100 miles of non-continuous coastline in Alaska, making the Exxon Valdez oil spill the...
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...I - Background Study EXXON VALDEZ CASE Companies would always be prone to crises and problems beyond their control. What makes a company stand; amidst all problems they are dealing with is how they deal with it. One of the greatest controversies during the 1980’s was the Exxon Valdez oil spill that happened on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez ship had identified icebergs and decided to take a different route to get around them. Unfortunately the oil tanker crashed into shallow water, this area is actually called the Bligh Reef, but because of the hit the tanker had about 10 million gallons of crude oil into the reef.This catastrophe got the media’s attention, and Exxon’s response to the environmental damage they had caused was very unprofessional. The company completely refused to communicate openly and effectively. The CEO of the company, Lawrence Rawl even refused to be seen for almost a week. Efforts to contain the spill were slow and Exxon's response was even slower. Because of the lack of appearance from high profile personnel from Exxon and the lack of action from their company, it left the impression that the Exxon Corporation did not take this accident seriously. Exxon Valdez case became one of the classical case examples of a “not to do in handling with a crisis”. By the time, they started to do some action; their reputation is already tainted with negative comments from...
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...In 1989, Exxon Corporation caused one of the worst environmental disasters. The oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 250,000 barrels, an amount equal to more than 10 million, into the waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound after striking Bligh Reef at approximately 12:04 a.m. on March 24. The spill eventually covered 11,000 square miles of ocean and coated 1,300 miles of coastline. Shortly after the incident, different media piled in to begin extensive coverage often pointing out Exxon’s corporate irresponsibility. Company’s efforts to contain the spill were not good enough and slow but Exxon’s response was even slower. In addressing the problem, it tool company officials 10 hours after the accident to deploy booms that will contain the spill. Company executives refused to comment on the accident for almost a week and refusing to acknowledge the extent of the problem. In addition, statements made to the press by high-ranking executives were often inconsistent and contained contradictory information making the press question the credibility and truthfulness of Exxon. After the Exxon Valdez ran aground, the company conducted all its communication from the small town of Valdez, Alaska. This area proved inadequate, having only limited communication capabilities. Exxon seemed unwilling to disseminate its information using any other method or location. But the biggest criticism the company received was the fact that CEO Lawrence Rawl waited nearly six days to make a public statement...
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...Introduction Exxon Mobil is an American company resulting of a merger from 1999 between Mobil Oil & Exxon Corporation. Exxon Mobil’s field of activity focuses on oil’s extraction, refining and distribution where it is one of the leaders. Exxon Mobil is also one of the largest petrochemicals producers in the world. It has 45 refineries in twenty-five countries with a distilling capacity of 6.3 million barrels of oil per day. It also has 42,000 service stations in more than 100 countries under the brand names Exxon, Esso and Mobil. The corporation has regained the No. 1 rank, in the fortune magazine, of the largest U.S. companies, dethroning Wal-Mart, the retail giant, with a turnover of 453 billion dollars. We are going to perform an Ethical Review of Exxon Mobil. As a first step, it is important to say that when it comes to ethics and oil industry everything already seems lost in advance. Since long the image of this industry is marred by various environmental disasters (oil spill on the coasts etc…) and many business problems that suggest that oil companies have blood on their hands. Following these disturbing facts it now seems essential for Oil businesses to regain a public image for stakeholders & all others. Indeed, a lot of these events have significantly harmed the Oil Industry. We will therefore study Exxon Mobile’s ethics based on its history, its ethics policy, its corporate board & key executives and finally through its ethical practice. ...
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...Faculty of Economics Seminar paper on the subject: English 4 Crisis management June, 2012 Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. The study of crisis management originated with the large scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980. Three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time. Venette argues that "crisis is a process of transformation where the old system can no longer be maintained." Therefore the fourth defining quality is the need for change. If change is not needed, the event could more accurately be described as a failure or incident. In contrast to risk management, which involves assessing potential threats and finding the best ways to avoid those threats, crisis management involves dealing with threats before, during, and after they have occurred. That is, crisis management is proactive, not merely reactive. It is a discipline within the broader context of management consisting of skills and techniques required to identify, assess, understand, and cope with a serious situation, especially from the moment it first occurs to the point that recovery procedures start. Introduction Crisis management consists of: * Methods used to respond...
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...Intro Exxon Mobil is one of the most successful businesses in the history of the United States. Though it did not start as Exxon, but evolved through splitting and joining of oil companies, it has always been a strong competitor in the field of oil sales. Exxon is now one of the top companies in the world, and has its eye on growth. According to Fortune 500 Exxon is the second largest company in the world, and though it is not the number one largest, it is the most profitable. In 2011 Exxon’s profits topped $30 billion, a whopping 58% jump. Background In 1870 a man named John D. Rockefeller founded a company called Standard Oil Company and by 1878 it controlled 95% of the US refining capacity. By 1911 the Supreme Court of the United States[->0] ruled that Standard Oil must be dissolved and split into 34 different companies. Two of these companies were Jersey Standard[->1], which eventually became Exxon, and Socony[->2] which eventually became Mobil. [5] Both companies grew significantly over the next few decades. In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Co.[->3], an industry pioneer dating back to 1866. In 1966, Socony-Vacuum changed its name to ‘Mobil Oil Corporation’. A decade later, the newly incorporated Mobil Corporation absorbed Mobil Oil as a wholly owned subsidiary[->4]. Jersey Standard, led by Walter C. Teagle[->5], became the largest oil producer in the world. Jersey Standard changed its name to Exxon Corporation in 1972 and established Exxon as a trademark throughout...
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...end of it. Long before Enron’s collapse, a number of business ethicists and business professionals watched with concern as Wall Street analysts demanded increasingly strong corporate financial performance to support rising corporate stock prices. At the same time, the gargantuan compensation packages (including stock options) of the top executives running these companies became inextricably linked to their companies’ stock prices. In 1990, average CEO pay at major corporations was 107 times the pay of the average worker. By 2004, CEO pay had risen to 431 times the pay of the average employee. (If the pay of average workers in the United States had risen as fast as CEO pay, the lowest paid workers would be earning $23.03 an hour, not $5.15 an hour.)2 It was an “accident” waiting to happen, although everyone was making so much money in the market that no one wanted to admit that something could be fundamentally wrong. Experts warned of a bubble—even Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, cautioned against “irrational exuberance” in the markets.3 But no one could have predicted how bad things would get. In a June 2002 interview on PBS’s Frontline, Arthur Levitt, former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, explained how stock prices influence executives and their ethical decision making...
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...KENSINGTON COLLEG OF BUSINESS AND UNIVERSITY OF WALES BP Market Analysis and Strategic Marketing Recommendations In the USA after the Gulf of Mexico Oil spill Nahid Mohsen Pour 2/28/2011 Contains: 2962 words Without charts, content, references, tables In this essay, I am performing Macro environmental analysis of BP business in the USA, after the gulf of Mexico oil spill, and also try to give Strategic Marketing recommendations to recover from the so called “Marketing disaster in the USA market” Nahid Mohsen Pour Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4 Approach ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Importance of Marketing ..................................................................................................................... 4 Part I: Macro Environmental Analysis of BP business in the USA after the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill ............ 5 Political Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 5 Economical Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 5 Social Analysis..........................................................................
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...2010, Mike Williams already knew the standard procedure for jumping from a 33,000 ton oil rig: “Reach your hand around your life jacket, grab your ear, take one step off, look straight ahead, and fall.”1 This would prove to be important knowledge later that night when an emergency announcement was issued over the rig’s PA system. Williams was the chief electronics technician for Transocean, a U.S.-owned, Switzerland-based oil industry support company that specialized in deep water drilling equipment. The company’s $560 million Deepwater Horizon rig was in the Gulf of Mexico working on the Macondo well. British Petroleum (BP) held the rights to explore the well and had leased the rig, along with its crew, from Transocean. Of the 126 people aboard the Deepwater Horizon, 79 were from Transocean, seven were from BP, and the rest were from other firms including Anadarko, Halliburton, and M-1 Swaco, a subsidiary of Schlumberger. Managing electronics on the Deepwater Horizon had inured Williams to emergency alarms. Gas levels had been running high enough to prohibit any “hot” work such as welding or wiring that could cause sparks. Normally, the alarm system would have gone off with gas levels as high as they were. However, the alarms had been disabled in order to prevent false alarms from waking people in the middle of the night. But the emergency announcement that came over the PA system on the night of April 20 was clearly no false alarm. 1 Testimony from Michael Williams, The Joint...
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...Alaska Brand Audit Brand Inventory History Alaska has been a unique brand for many years. Originally known as Russian America because it was owned by Russia, the origin of the name Alaska is a misconception from the first Russian explorers to venture into Alaskan waters (the original Aleut word "alaxsxaq" literally meaning "object toward which the action of the sea is directed"[Alaska]). When the United States bought Alaska, even though the price was only two cents an acre, it was known for many years as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox”, after William Seward, the Secretary of State who was primarily responsible for pushing the purchase from Russia through Congress. In the early days Alaska’s brand image was mostly negative. It was known as the “Frozen North”, the “land of ice and snow”, the “land without summer”. Many of these images are from the stories and poetry of Robert Service, Jack London and their contemporaries. A good example of this writing is the poem “Cremation of Sam McGee”— see appendix II, (Service). All these extreme brand images dominated perceptions of Alaska prior to the discovery of gold in the Klondike in the late 1800s. After gold was discovered these negative perceptions were softened somewhat, though they remained rather negative—in large part due to the difficulty of living in the far north. Our Brand Survey We did a brand audit of Alaska to see how well Alaska has worked past these harsh criticisms. To accomplish this we surveyed...
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...Organizational sustainability in the international environment: The case of 2010 Gulf of Mexico Exploring Justice, Fairness and Organizational sustainability in the international environment: The case of 2010 Gulf of Mexico Abstract This study leverages insights from the literature of organizational sustainability, stakeholder theory as well as the notion of organizational justice and fairness to help answer the question as to how companies should morally prioritize corporate social responsibility, corporate accountability and stakeholder claims. In this paper, I also utilized the concept of corporate social responsibility as well as the triple bottom line in order to form my own model of sustainability. This model is used to analyze the case of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spills which was claimed as the responsibility of British Petroleum. I also addressed the strong relationship between organizational justice and organization sustainability with the conclusion that by enhancing organizational justice and fairness, organizations will be able to obtain its sustainable development in the long terms. Moreover, it is important to note that this article mostly focus on the sustainability regarding to three dimensions of economic, environmental and social, analyzing the real-world problems in order to emphasize the importance of philosophical roots of sustainability. Perhaps the result came out from this study will be seen as a thought-provoking theoretical and empirical grounds...
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...Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 8-1-2012 Deepwater, Deep Ties, Deep Trouble: A StateCorporate Environmental Crime Analysis of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Elizabeth A. Bradshaw Western Michigan University, brads2ea@cmich.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Bradshaw, Elizabeth A., "Deepwater, Deep Ties, Deep Trouble: A State-Corporate Environmental Crime Analysis of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill" (2012). Dissertations. Paper 53. This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu. DEEPWATER, DEEP TIES, DEEP TROUBLE: A STATE-CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME ANALYSIS OF THE 2010 GULF OF MEXICO OIL SPILL by Elizabeth A. Bradshaw A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology Advisor: Ronald C. Kramer, Ph.D. Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan August 2012 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN June 29, 2012 Date WE HEREBY APPROVE THE DISSERTATION SUBMITTED BY Elizabeth A. Bradshaw ENTITLED Deepwater, Deep Ties, Deep Trouble: A State-Corporate Environmental...
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...CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS CSR? eople create organizations to leverage their collective resources in pursuit of common goals. As organizations pursue these goals, they interact with others inside a larger context called society. Based on their purpose, organizations can be classified as for-profits, governments, or nonprofits. At a minimum, for-profits seek gain for their owners; governments exist to define the rules and structures of society within which all organizations must operate; and nonprofits (sometimes called NGOs—nongovernmental organizations) emerge to do social good when the political will or the profit motive is insufficient to address society’s needs. Aggregated across society, each of these different organizations represents a powerful mobilization of resources. In the United States, for example, more than 595,000 social workers are employed largely outside the public sector—many in the nonprofit community and medical organizations—filling needs not met by either government or the private sector.1 Society exists, therefore, as a mix of these different organizational forms. Each performs different roles, but each also depends on the others to provide the complete patchwork of exchange interactions (products and services, financial and social capital, etc.) that constitute a well-functioning society. Whether called corporations, companies, businesses, proprietorships, or firms, for example, for-profit organizations also interact with government, trade unions, suppliers,...
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